Raymond Gay-Crosier Collection on Albert Camus

Albert Camus, philosopher, author, playwright, and journalist, was born on November 7, 1913 in Algiers, Algeria. He obtained a degree in philosophy from the University of Algiers in 1935. In the fall of 1935, he created and directed a student theater group with the intent of bringing world literature plays to Algiers' underprivileged people. Early on, he worked as a journalist in the local newspaper and later become editor-in-chief. His progressive political views, deemed anti-colonialist, contributed to the reasons why the paper, at the outbreak of WWII, became the victim of censure by the local government and why, in March of 1940, Camus immigrated to Paris. During World War II, he created a newspaper (Combat) as his way of participating in the French Resistance. Author of such works as The Stranger, The Plague, The Fall, The Rebel, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Caligula, Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. He died on January 4, 1960 when his car hit a tree, killing both he and the car's driver Michel Gallimard instantly. For more on Camus's life, please see Raymond Gay-Crosier's biography.

Collector Raymond Gay-Crosier was born in Basel Switzerland on August 30, 1937. He studied at the Universities of Basel, Paris (Sorbonne) and Bern, Switzerland, where he received his doctorat-ès-lettres in 1965 with a dissertation on Albert Camus's theater. Gay-Crosier began teaching at the University of Florida as an Associate Professor in 1967. He primarily covered the field of 20th-century French literature and was promoted to full Professor in 1973. In 2003, he retired as Professor Emeritus in order to devote his time to the contributions and direction of the projected four-volume Pléiade edition of Camus's Œuvres complètes. See Gay-Crosier's full biography for more.